IT Success!: Towards a New Model for Information Technology

4.4. Prioritizing and approving demand

Ideas which pass the first level of screening and validation move down to the next stage and are transformed into project requests, for which executive sponsorship and approval is sought. Project requests are further qualified in order to build a business case, which will be based on a combination of business alignment, costs, benefits, technology alignment, risk and IT resource and scheduling constraints. Let us look at each of these in turn.

4.4.1. Business alignment

All firms have medium to long-term strategies (e.g. become market leader in product category X, reduce costs by Y%) and corresponding business objectives for each year (e.g. launch new product ABC and generate first year sales of $Xm). Companies should therefore invest in projects which help them to meet such goals. This should result in demand for IT products and services being aligned with company strategies and objectives, known as business alignment. The first and most elementary step in building a business case would be to link a project request directly or indirectly to achieving one or more clearly identified business objectives (appropriately weighted, because not all objectives are of equal importance).

Now you might be forgiven for asking 'Well, isn't that rather obvious?'; how can IT initiatives not be aligned with the business – after all, it's company money being spent, isn't it? Well, as explained at the start of this chapter, projects in most companies are launched ...